From Streetcars To Spaceships

Make districts simple.

I write a lot, and think even more, about issues of organizational, and specifically government malfunction. There are many things one can say about this, and rest assured, I intend to keep going on at enervating length about dozens of aspects of this for as long as I have the time and access.

But there is one measure that applies to governments at all levels from town to sovereign, that is simple, very difficult to subvert, and should be capable of short and long term fundamental improvement in how governments work and how well.

Set geometric limits on the circumference to area ratios of voting districts.

It's as simple as simple gets. Simply provide a maximum numerical ratio, where the length of the line one would draw to go all the way around a voting district can only be but so complex. This simple thing would, right there, cut way down on gerrymandering, one of the most pernicious kinds of political gamesmanship. Ideally, such a law would also limit the degree of change a district could be subjected to in a given period of time. There are dozens of possible nuances that I leave as an exercise for the reader. You're smart folks, afaict; you'll see them just fine. And, as always, you're welcome to comment below.

Think about it.

Consequences in Fiction, Part Two

So I see that yesterday's post has already drawn traffic searching on the phrase "burn notice". Good. Especially since the last straw for me had been having Sam, one of the lead characters, getting beaten and interrogated for three days (unless I'm misunderstanding the timeline in the episode) and, as soon as he's untied, standing up (after three days tied to a chair?!), running into combat, and, as soon as it's over, being casually dropped off at his place looking no more than a bit tired, with just a manly "thank you, brother".

Okay, now I've never been tortured, but I've gotta say that I think that almost three weeks tied to a bed in a burn ward gives me a little to say about this, especially since I kept flashing back to those weeks while I watched the torture scenes. And I can tell you now that after three days tied to a chair, frequently with his mouth duct-taped shut (which, by the way, in a hot, enclosed space like that would have almost certainly killed him right there), being beaten, interrogated, screamed at, and spending most of the rest of the time alone in that dark metal room, he wouldn't even be able to lift his arms or walk, let alone jump into manly action. And when they go out? I'm sorry, but just about anybody would have fucking well fallen over sobbing. Would he, maybe, in theory, wait for his buddy to drive away? Possibly. But one way or another he would be very, very fucked up indeed and a couple of smart guys like those, old pros as they're supposed to be, would have acknowledged that in no uncertain way.

So, just to let y'all know, that was the thing that inspired my previous post.

And, as it happens, my timing was good. Looks like Slashdot has a thread going right now about torture in fiction based on an expansion pack for WoW, and the article they link to turns out to be about just the same point as my previous post, about the stories that fiction tells about actions having consequences. Or not.

And you know what? I think that the article says these things damned well. So I'm done. Go read it. You'll be glad that you did.

Iodize salt. It's the cheapest way to help the truly poor.

When an area is low in iodine, people grow up shorter, deformed, and, most reliably, stupid. Read more about it here. Most of these techniques average about five cents per person addressed per year. And beyond the usual adding iodine to salt technique and such methods, there are others that depend less on an industrialized salt supply or a reliably conscientious local government.  Or, to put it another way, the U.S. government could pay to deal with this for the entire at risk population in the entire world for the cost of a few hours of our insanity in Iraq.

Living in Portland I get to deal with plenty of non-profits, who trumpet their supposed amazingness for doing things like putting hundreds of conventional refrigerators in towns without electricity as ways to "bring them into the modern world". When I challenge them about this kind of bullshit ("if you have hundreds of millions of dollars a year to dispense, why not spend most of it putting in superinsulated iceboxes built by local residents of cob?") they get snitty and say that it's a waste of their time (!) to get bogged down in such things or are otherwise dismissive and go right back on script.

Well, the next time you get approached by one of these do-gooder groups, so many of which define effective aid as that which turns the areas addressed into third rate imitations of fifties American suburbia, just ask them about iodine. It's cheap, simple, and needed by hundreds of millions of people.

I would have put in a link to a group that does address this but to my disgust, I don't know of any (other than UNESCO) and a web search didn't turn any up.

But all the moreso,as the holidays come, a lot of people will be asking for your money. When they do, ask them about iodine. And when you find somebody who says yes, help them. And be sure to tell the rest of us about it.

-Rustin

Note: This post originally cited Mercy Corps as a group distributing fridges. Since I based this conclusion on repeated conversations with staffers at Mercy Corps who were presented at Mercy Corps events as former managers of overseas work, I stand by my statement. But since Mercy Corps, to be fair, mostly does things that I *do* support and given that the only online references I could find were either for small donations or for Banda Aceh, I've pulled that reference from the piece.

Will Pundits Ever Admit Obama's Considerable Foreign Policy Experience?

What I have found strange and confusing is what appears to me to be an extremely counter-productive refusal of Obama's own supporters to use the relevant facts to counter the slur that Obama has no foreign policy experience.

Okay, I could go into lots of things because I've found quite a bit that should be general knowledge. But let me focus on one thing. In late 2006 Barack Obama created, researched, and has his name on key legislation to fight proliferation of weapons worldwide. That sure as hell looks like "a major piece of legislation" to me.

From his congressional site:

• Senator Obama traveled in 2005 to the former Soviet Union with Senator Richard Lugar (R-IN) to investigate the dangers posed by unsecured weapons.

• Senator Obama traveled to Iraq, Kuwait, Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian territories in 2006. 

• Senator Obama was one of the first legislators to recognize the dangers of a potential avian influenza pandemic, and successfully secured $25 million for U.S. agencies working in Southeast Asia. 

• Senator Obama has traveled to the United Nations to meet with Sudanese officials and visited refugee camps on the Chad-Sudan border to raise international awareness of the ongoing humanitarian disaster there. 

• Senator Obama wrote and passed legislation to build on the historic election in the Congo and promote stability in the country. 

• During a two-week tour of Africa in 2006, Senator Obama took an HIV test in a public venue in Kenya. 

• Senator Obama has advocated for a policy of pressuring the Mugabe regime… He introduced a resolution in March 2007 that condemned the Zimbabwean government for repressive and violent actions against its people. The Obama resolution was passed by the Senate in July 2007.

• Senator Obama has worked to hold former Liberian President Charles Taylor accountable for his reprehensible actions.

• Senator Obama has advocated for a more effective U.S. strategy to help those around the world who live in extreme poverty. In December 2007, he worked with Senators Chuck Hagel and Maria Cantwell to introduce the Global Poverty Act, which requires the President to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to reduce extreme global poverty in half by 2015…

And, from looking around, it looks to me like he has been right out front on not just big stuff like shoulder-mounted missiles but about the vast numbers of AKs and other handheld weapons being handed out by extremist-backed warlords in impoverished places around the world.

Now, I don't know about where any of these commentators live, but here on Planet Earth, that is what is known as "foreign policy experience". And if anybody tries that "he's never been anything but a community organizer" horseshit with me around I'm going to shove it so far down their throat it'll wind up coming out their ass.

Metaphorically speaking, of course. Because I'm a gentle, non-violent guy. Really.

So how do we access the ISS now?

As a number of people are pointing out, with the Russians invading Georgia, which is both an E.U. candidate and a U.S. ally, the option of using Russian craft to get to the ISS is fading fast. Even if we assume that the U.S. government is willing to use Russian launch systems, it's damned near certain that they would charge rates that make Halliburton look like a non-profit. After all, Putin and his new proxy boy have made it pretty clear that they're none too fond of the U.S.A. and selfless they ain't.

So what do we do now?

Personally, I say that Congress should immediately, as in within the next month, put another billion or so into scholarships for engineering students and another billion into funding for U.S. manufacturing startups. Because not only are we going to be desperate in coming years for the kind of labor that engineering students and engineers provide, we're going to need a hell of a lot more people who can help aerospace ventures tool up. Admittedly, I was convinced of this *before* Ossetia became the new word for "place where people are shooting at each other a heck of a bunch" but I'm still convinced that I'm right.

Beyond that? Will, first of all, NASA should be reactivating the X-38 program with a quickness, including open-sourcing as many of the specs as possible. NASA is running behind and letting the rest of us understand and take our shot at improving the designs should help us to catch up.

There are plenty of other options, as this article lays out nicely.

But the other big lesson we should be taking away from this is not to make our strategic assets dependent on the cooperation of a totalitarian regime. This should be a no-brainer but evidently it wasn't. I have been as happy as anybody to see the U.S. coming up with reasons to keep the aerospace community in the former Soviet Union employed and equipped doing relatively non-military work but there really need to be limits.

Will this experience keep our government from doing this again? Probably not. We've got a long history of cozying up to dictators of all stripes to do our work for us. But that's a subject for another day.